There is a growing trend to provide business application software to a plurality of industries in order to simplify business procedures and/or forecasts. Business application software provides navigation and/or exploration across heterogeneous business data, which can be related explicitly and/or implicitly. Business applications typically are assorted with an overwhelming amount of information, wherein an essentially endless amount of this information contains inter-relationships. For example, a typical middle market application can contain forms, tables, inventory, charts, graphs, etc., wherein a majority of data is intertwined explicitly and implicitly. Specifically, data (e.g., billing forms, employee tables, order forms, etc.) can be utilized in conjunction with business applications involving, for example, payroll applications, sales analysis, shipping applications, bonus reports, cost analysis, etc.
Conventionally, hypermedia systems are utilized to discover and/or navigate through the enormous quantities of information within a business application. Such hypermedia systems are information systems in which data access and exploration is accomplished through navigation rather than traditional con text querying. Additionally, such systems create and maintain links within an application or to external applications and resources. These links provide users with the ability to retrieve additional information related to the query results. For instance, a query for a list of customer names can also provide a link to another query that retrieves a list of orders for a particular customer.
One benefit associated with hypermedia systems is the ability to store complex, cross referenced bodies of information as a network of nodes and links (e.g., a hierarchical database model that links records together in a tree structure). Querying within navigation can be defined as a query for data access and a query for correlation. For instance, a query for data access can be utilized to provide data access to certain type of node where resources are data. Whereas a query for correlation provides the correlation of the data based upon, for example, metadata and/or keywords. In other words, the term “query” refers to getting data (e.g., projects data), whereas the term “navigation” refers to getting related data (e.g., projects relationships and data). This navigational projection of relationships between data can also be referred to as a “non-linear” exploration of data.
During non-linear exploration of data within a hypermedia system, a user typically can become lost and/or disorientated by the extensive cognitive overhead. Essentially, users can be overwhelmed by the vast amount of related links discovered during a navigational data exploration search. Moreover, navigation within hypermedia systems has traditionally been performed during runtime. A majority of the code is imperative, yielding modules with a single use, which in turn results in a very inefficient and slow application during runtime. In view of at least the foregoing, there is a need to improve navigation within related data in business applications.